Labels and eco-design

The labels of bottled products contain information for consumers

 

(identification of the nature of the product, the quantity contained, nutritional value, etc.) and form part of the brand’s visual identity, which may influence the buyer’s choice. Conventional labels made of paper stuck onto the bottle, sleeves, plastic labels or decorations printed directly on the bottle all represent a few grammes, or fractions of a gramme, of material that helps to meet the marking regulations applying to commercial products and to incite shoppers to buy the product by attracting their attention.

 

Generally firmly attached to the body of the bottle, the label is an integral part of the packaging.

However, even if the packaging represents a significant part of the purchased product at the outset, it eventually becomes waste, whose end of life must be addressed by the marketer. Packaging engages the responsibility of the packager and entails legal and regulatory obligations. More than 20 years ago, Eco-Emballages and Adelphe certified companies were created to satisfy these requirements by fulfilling a mission for the common good that consisted of controlling the national household waste collection, sorting and recycling system.
Eco-Emballages works shoulder to shoulder with companies to encourage the inclusion of packaging materials in this system, by producing packaging that is well adapted to current recycling processes. Solutions include combinations of materials that are compatible with one another or that can be easily separated.
We have been recycling glass for a long time already. In fact, the glass recycling business is the oldest of all recycling activities and, consequently, the most advanced. The recovered glass is sorted and prepared by disposing of any impurities (closures, metal parts, foreign objects, etc.), in order to produce a quality of recycled glass that is compatible with the melting process in the glassworks furnaces. At this stage, the material is called a cullet. To a certain extent, glass can be melted in the presence of organic matter, such as the residue of the content of the bottles, which is difficult to eliminate completely in the sorting process. This matter is burned, but if the quantities exceed given limits, it can disrupt the melting process and affect the quality of the glass produced.

The labels on bottles made of certain materials can also form a source of organic matter in the furnaces.
Even if they do not amount to much in terms of weight, they can potentially interfere with the glass manufacturing process. Conventional paper labels disintegrate easily in the sorting and cullet preparation processes, under the combined effects of humidity and the abrasive nature of the broken glass. Since they are mostly eliminated and only leave residues in acceptable proportions, these labels have never been considered to be a problem in the recycling process.

 

"One of Cetie’s main missions consists of bringing together the experts from different sectors that are faced with the same technical problem in the realm of bottling."

 
But technology has progressed and innovations are now required to take the end-of-life aspects into consideration in eco-design. Transparent plastic labels, giving the impression of being printed directly on the glass, appeared a few years ago. Because these plastic labels are firmly bonded to the glass, and tear- and abrasion-resistant, they cannot be separated from the glass on the recycled glass processing lines. When the bottle is crushed, the pieces of glass remain stuck to the plastic label over the entire contact surface. So the impact on the glass recycling process is significant: either the glass that remains stuck to the plastic is removed from the recycling process along with the label, or the labels stuck to the glass end up in the cullet in quantities above the limits for organic matter in recycling cullet.

 

The development of the circular economy is a necessary priority

Faced with the rise of this type of label on the market and, consequently, their presence in packaging glass for recycling, in 2011, Eco-Emballages launched a collaborative research project with all the industrial players affected by this problem in order to identify and develop a new labelling solution that is compatible with the recycling process and does not compromise the quality of application in the production phase, of preservation and of use for the consumer. Almost three years later, a new technology has been born that offers the same functionality as its predecessor and is also compatible with the recycling process. In April 2015*, an active communications campaign was launched around the extremely positive result of this research project. The campaign highlights the efforts made and the resources deployed to improve the recyclability of bottles with this type of label for the entire profession*.
Cetie, which was part of this partnership, will also help to distribute the good practice derived from this work. In particular, a new chapter on end of life will be added to the revised version of the existing Cetie Guide “Self-adhesive labels on glass bottles and jars”, which will be available soon.
 
This story shows how meetings and collaboration between the different sectors of packaging - from the manufacturers of adhesives and labels to the bottlers and the operators of glass processing lines - allowed a technically and economically satisfactory solution to be developed.
The development of the circular economy is a necessary priority in view of the limited capacity of the ecosystem to sustainably support current modes of consumption. The circular economy demands more interconnections between the players involved in the different steps of a product’s life cycle.
 
One of Cetie’s main missions consists of bringing together experts from different sectors that are faced with the same technical problem in the realm of bottling. The consideration of technical questions related to the environmental impact of bottled products opens up prospects for the creation of new shared documentary resources.

http://www.ecoemballages.fr/
  PDF (FR) :
- Liquides & Conditionnement N°379 (FR) Tags :

Glass container

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Eco-design

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Recycling

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Collaboration

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Guidelines

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Labels